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During the first years after NAFTA's signing in late 1993, the press uncritically swallowed Clinton White House and Fortune 500 propaganda observing that U.S. exports to Mexico were surging and claiming that all exports affect the American economy in the same positive way.

TRADE DEFICIT: Formally termed a balance of trade deficit, a condition in which a nation's imports are greater than exports. In other words, a country is buying more stuff for foreigners than foreigners are buying from domestic producers. A trade deficit is usually thought to be bad for a country. For this reason, some countries seek to reduce their trade deficit by--

establishing trade barriers on imports,

reducing the exchange rate (termed devaluation) such that exports are less expensive and imports more expensive, or

invading foreign countries with sizable armies.

Sadly, Dubya has fully embraced international Klintonomics. He has emphaticly sworn off solution #1 and has committed to suffering #2 while practicing #3.

the americans have been and still are very foolish on trade policy. Bush has ridiculed people who don't agree with him on the WTO agenda, but then Bush himself imposed tariffs for steel. Therefore, bush according to his own behavior, his own words of ridicule towards others, is an idiot.

We've learned through experience the last 30 years that when we negotiate trade agreements with foreign nations that the foreign nations frequently behave in bad faith throughout the whole process and do not enforce the agreement in their home country. But the elites in our nation, lusting after an opportunity to take power from the constitutional process that empowers our citizens to elect lawmakers who set our trade policies, have chosen to ignore this experience. They've actually imposed, without any real meaningful public discussion or even sanction by the elected lawmakers, this WTO system which means all decisions on trade are to be made by un-elected negotiators who cut different deals with every country involved in order to get them to agree. We don't like different deals, different standards to apply to every country. We like equal standards applying to the nations, not different standards.

The US congress and the president should be concerned with america's welfare. They should not be concerned about fanatical application of their free trade ideologies. Free trade is only a means to an end. It helps our nation build wealth for the people of america, that is its' purpose. But the republicans have raised this free trade up as a god and made it an end in itself. When aspects of our trade policy do not benefit our nation they are blind to it because they've made free trade into a god, that's why.

Our number 1 manufacturer, Boeing, is now going to produce its' jets in China. We import 5 times from china what we export to china. The Chinese will negotiate with the WTO in such a way as to result in unfair rules that will not benefit us, yet the republican ideologues in america don't care. They are lost in their ideology.

Was it really in our nation's interest in 1934 for Henry Ford to build factories in Germany? Those who feel that China is not a potential military opponent are fools. Those who wish to sabotage the american effort to protect its interests by not letting congress pass laws governing trade policy are globalist ideologues who've buried their heads in the sand just as Henry Ford in 1934 was blind towards the dark side of the nazis.

When an american job goes to china, that means that the means to support social security through taxes on that job also goes, as does the means to support children and families. A bean-counter republican does not see this as having any value at all, interpreting all reality through their ideological prism that says somehow by magic we will benefit from free trade no matter what. Those who delude themselves into thinking that the Chinese government is going to allow chinese companies to avoid a favoritism for chinese products are very irresponsible people.